MARTY RUSSELL: Only election exceeds Halloween scare

Each Halloween a neighbor down the road puts a roll of hay (what do you call those things, they’re not “bales”) out on the road and decorates it for the occasion. Last year she spray-painted it orange and made it into a Jack-O-Lantern. This year it’s a black cat, complete with one of those foam-noodle swimming thingies for a tail.
I decided this year I was going to do something special for Halloween and decided I’d make a regulation-looking highway sign. One of those squares stood up on one corner on a post, painted regulation highway orange and in black lettering “CAUTION ZOMBIES AHEAD.” I was going to sneak out late one night and plant it on the highway just ahead of the Oxford city limits sign. As anyone who has driven through the town on a Thursday, Friday or Saturday night knows, sometimes it’s hard to distinguish the drunken students staggering down the streets from the walking dead.
But, as usual, I procrastinated, and now here it is Halloween, and I have yet to even start my sign. I suspect a lot of you are in the same predicament. It’s the big day, and you have a costume party to attend tonight, and you still don’t have any ideas. Fear not, or, OK, fear, it is Halloween after all. Here are a few I came up with.
Most of the polls and surveys I’ve looked at this Halloween say the biggest seller among costumes is Big Bird from “Sesame Street.” But why stop at just the costume? Get one of those fake bloody axes that attaches to your head. Big Bird gets the ax, get it? Or a placard for the back of the costume that reads, “Will work for bird seed,” which is about what it costs to produce most public television shows.
Then again, how about a three-ring binder with some Barbie dolls inside and go as you-know-who.
Borrow your wife’s hairspray, spike your hair to one side, put on a wind jacket with your favorite news logo on it, carry a microphone, and go as one of those crazy idiots who stand out in hurricanes and tell you it’s windy and raining. Duh.
Wear a Mississippi State football jersey and some fairy wings. No, you’re not Eli Manning in those DirecTV commercials, you’re TinkerBully. Go around repeating, “I believe, I believe!”
You and your wife can dress as John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John in “Grease” and go around asking people if you can borrow some Euros. (Get it? Grease, Greece? Maybe not).
Or how about representatives from the Old Monsters Home? Frankenstein with gray hair and rusty neck bolts using a walker (he always seemed to need one). A balding, mangy Wolfman? A gray-haired Dracula who carries his fangs in a glass of water?
OK, maybe I should just get back to my highway sign.
Marty Russell writes a Wednesday column for the Daily Journal. He can be reached at marty.russell56@gmail.com.